The rock problem is they have 800 lbs of rock. Could be tan bark for all we know. When a geologist, geochemist gets a piece to study, he or she does
not go to the receiving lab to chip off their own piece. Rather, a tiny fragment of rock is sent to them. So it is very conceivable they have a few
ounces of rock collected robotically and chip pieces off these representative samples and send them to scientists the whole while pointing to the 800
lbs of tan bark and saying it is all moon rock. We so do not know that.

Oh my god you are truly an amazing mind.

Okay, so in your world it went like this. They planned to hoax the world about a man landing on the moon. So they basically did 80 % of the work
anyway, flew to the moon to send a robot there.

THEN (and this is the good part!) they somehow got the robot back along with some samples. They launched those two from the moon somehow (this part
really interests me, care to guess how that could be done?) and brought all that safely back to earth.

And then you said that they probably threw around the same few little samples that they got from the mission you just made up to fool the experts.

Let me ask you as politely as I can what planet you think we live on? Because it must be a different one than mine.

Yours is a bubbly fantasy world that has unfortunately nothing to do with reality. I really do hope that you´re young. Because if your melon produces
that level of delusions after you´re 30, then you are pretty much done for.

Rationally from a physics and engineering standpoint the goals of a moon mission could be satisfied by implementing an economical robotic solution.

Historically satisfying the emotive needs of the masses has been the domain of the artistic community.

Back in the 60's I landed on the fence over this one, I believe they split it to increase the audience participation but it would have been a
brilliant hack either way.

In answer, first paragraph, robotics are never 'economic' in a specialized field, not then not now, however astronauts were economic back then, and
had more memory, and could perform more tasks than any robot, caveat is that a robot, back then may have been able to perform simple field experiments
that the astronauts could not do, however the astronauts had their own simple experiments.
Sentence in the middle is a disconnect, since it is an assumption that people et al, see space exploration as a satisfaction for their emotions, when
that is clearly not the case, since you admit to being "on the fence" "back in the 60's" in your last paragraph.

Rationally from a physics and engineering standpoint the goals of a moon mission could be satisfied by implementing an economical robotic solution.

Historically satisfying the emotive needs of the masses has been the domain of the artistic community.

Back in the 60's I landed on the fence over this one, I believe they split it to increase the audience participation but it would have been a
brilliant hack either way.

In answer, first paragraph, robotics are never 'economic' in a specialized field, not then not now, however astronauts were economic back then, and
had more memory, and could perform more tasks than any robot, caveat is that a robot, back then may have been able to perform simple field experiments
that the astronauts could not do, however the astronauts had their own simple experiments.
Sentence in the middle is a disconnect, since it is an assumption that people et al, see space exploration as a satisfaction for their emotions, when
that is clearly not the case, since you admit to being "on the fence" "back in the 60's" in your last paragraph.

edit on 14-2-2013 by
smurfy because: Text.

In repost, first sentence, robotics are obviously 'economic' in the car manufacturing industry and many other industries relying on accurate
implementation . I have no idea what the rest of your strained english means. Please elaborate.

And repetitive tasks. That's where the economy comes into it. There weren't a lot of lunar rovers built and each was very expensive (and
primitive).

When it comes to exploration humans can do a better job. When it comes looking at the terrain and figuring out the best way to place a reflector (a
small reflector) on the Moon, a human is (and was) far superior to anything a robot could have done.

Human: Hmmm. Slope that would put the reflector at a bad angle. This looks better over here.
Robot: I'll just stop here. (no, they weren't autonomous but a remote controlled rover still would have problems with proper placement)

One of the Russian units was only found a while ago. It got lost. The other wasn't set well and doesn't give really good returns. In contrast, the
Apollo reflectors have been used ever since they were set in place.

Remote controlled cameras and robotic equipment is much less expensive to implement for space applications than sending humans into space. The cost
of providing a safe journey for humans goes up exponentially with a guarantee of a safe return.

Providing the necessary environment for humans could not be done inexpensively. For example humans only tolerate a narrow range of temperatures and
three astronauts would generate over 80,000 Kcalories of heat during the mission. What did they use to cool the space suits some kind of endothermic
chemical reaction?

The missions that orbited Earth were not technically much more advanced than the high altitude test flights the US had been doing in the 1950's but a
mission to the moon would be quantum leap in risk. We didn't have any problem aiming weather satellites from LEO in the early 60's so the same
tech could be used with a comm delay half way to the moon.

A Remote controlled arm and camera system could easily place a reflector, leave footprints, gather samples whatever else they wanted to do. The Nasa
engineers had this choice.

Didn't that mandate come from president Kennedy's man on the moon speech in 1961?
Then Kennedy wanted to assassinate Fidel Castro in 1962.
And in 1963 he wanted the CIA to come clean about the cold war.

Absolutely. If you are sending men and women into space then real threat or no, the van Allen Belt issue must be addressed. By that I mean it must
be studied very seriously . If men and women are not on board, it is more or less of no concern.

Keep in mind the Russians brought moon rocks back to the earth robotically. So it is easier robotically and it is less expensive. Just ask the
Russians. If they were going to ultimately succeed with a manned program they would have had to have spent all the more money.

What happened when the Apollo 15 astronauts got the arrythmia problems? They had to study their hearts in great detail upon their return and it
ultimately was determined that it was a potassium deficiency based problem responsible. How much did that cost to figure out? You can bet plenty.
And you can also bet they could not ignore it.

When they cured Shepard of his middle ear problem they subsequently had to study him in great detail to be sure it was safe to send him into space.
How much did that evaluation cost? Plenty. If the trips were unmanned, the Shepard trip would have cost that much less and that is a lot.

When Borman got sick on the Apollo 8 trip they had had to study the Apollo 8 capsule upon its return in great detail because they were worried that it
was infected. They had to culture it for virus and bacteria. They had to culture the astronauts' stool looking for virus and bacteria. They had to
draw their blood and run influenza titers to be sure that wasn't the problem. They had to go back and study the food supply to be sure there was no
preformed staph toxin. All this took a tremendous amount of time and was very expensive.

This is just the tip of the iceberg, but because the US program used people the cost was very high.

This is quite interesting as part of a discussion about the reflector and the question of manned vs robotic lunar missions. C.O. Alley who was the
principle investigator for the LRRR experiments wrote up his original proposal after Surveyor 7 successfully collected tv images from Table Mountain
and Kitt Peak lasers.

That was January of 1968 that the Surveyor Mission took the pictures and March 1968 when Alley wrote up his proposal to NASA. Note how as far as Alley
was concerned it could be done either way. Put a LRRR on a Surveyor probe and soft land that on the moon robotically or have Armstrong and Aldrin
place it there. As it turns out they did it by way of a manned landing , hand placement. But if you pause to think about it and ignore the other
experiments for the moment what would have cost more, giving the thing to Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to place by hand or strapping the LRRR onto
another Surveyor craft and floating that onto the lunar surface? The Surveyor approach would be much cheaper. That is obvious.

I guess the science value of the experiment was viewed as quite high and knowing the astronauts placed the thing by hand just in that one place
probably had great appeal and so they went for the manned approach. It would be interesting to speak with Alley about what he remembers as far as how
they decided manned landing or Surveyor to place the LRRR. Of course Alley is not an aeronautics person. He is an astronomer. But he might be in
the best position to tell us the story.

One last interesting point about all of this. The Apollo 11 landing site coordinates became common knowledge in November of 1969 when the Apollo 11
Mission Report was published. With that information the Russians or anyone for that matter could range the moon. Now we are informed that the
astronomy staffs at McDonald and Lick Observatories were supposed to keep the landing site secret because if the Russians knew the coordinates and
ranged the moon then they presumably could measure the distances across the oceans as well as we could. But that story doesn't make any sense because
the coordinates were published in November of 1969 and the cold war did not end for 20 years. The Russians would take those numbers and range the
moon and measure the transocean distances too.

Nobody has argued here that an unmanned mission is impossible, or that it wouldn´t be cheaper than a manned flight. That is completely beside the
point.

The logical fallacy remains that the reflectors didn´t make much sense in the hoax scenario in the first place. Especially when you consider such
weird real world factors like cost for example.

The "hoax" was about a man on the moon. The reflectors would have added extra cost and risk while adding almost nothing to the party. The public
didn´t care about the reflectors, and in fact 99 from 100 people on the street today have no idea what we are talking about here.

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